What thoughts do you have when you think of God? Maybe even more important, what feelings do you have when you think of God? Does the thought of God stir up feelings of fear or condemnation? Does the thought of God make you troubled, or uneasy? Does it mainly stir up a sense of duty; I should be doing this or I shouldn't be doing that?

There are many people, even who consider themselves Christians, who dislike God, or fear him or become nervous at the thought of him. They view God as a distant Being whose expectations they fail to meet and therefore feel a constant sense of disapproval. They view God as someone who is basically disappointed in them.

The Holy Spirit comes into your life to take that all away and replace it with a Spirit of sonship. When you repent of your sins and trust in Christ you become a child of God. And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to make you know and feel like a son, to make you know that you are loved and cared for as a son; that you have the standing, the place of a son!; that you have a safe and secure place with your heavenly father; that he accepts you as his own son; that you belong to him.

John Brown in his commentary on Romans, said, “The Spirit leads you to regard God with delightful feelings of love and confidence with which a child regards his father”.

The real tragedy is when those who are children of God continue to live as though they were slaves or outcasts and do not enjoy their place as sons of God. When believers still feel insecure, isolated, lonely, abandoned, alienated from God, something is terribly wrong! The Holy Spirit has been sent into your heart to change all that!

Here in Romans 8 the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Sonship. His supreme work is to confirm to you, that you are a child of God and to cause you to love and trust God as a child. Luther translated it, “we have been given the Spirit of a child, or the Spirit of childship”. Other translations say Spirit of Sonship, or a spirit of adoption to sonship, or a Spirit of adoption as sons.

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Before I go deeper into this, I want to clear up something that may confuse some. Many times the Apostle Paul, referred to himself as a servant of Christ. He said he was a bond-servant, literally, a slave of Christ. But in our passage this morning and in a passage in Galatians, Paul clearly says we are not slaves but sons. So which is it? Both!

A bond-servant, in the way Paul uses it, emphasizes his complete loyalty to Jesus Christ, his desire to obey him completely, to be utterly true to the Lord. In that sense I would wish all of us to be slaves of Christ. I count it a great joy to offer myself to Christ as his servant or slave. I want to be that. But there is another aspect of being a slave that does NOT belong in our relationship with God, at all! That is a sense of fear or bondage.

Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear....” The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again. NIV “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..” ESV KJV “For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear..” The Bible teaches the in the New Covenant we are not enslaved to sin, or to the law, OR to fear!

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What is this spirit of bondage, that the Bible says you did NOT receive? It is a slave-like spirit, a spirit of dislike and fear, the spirit with which a slave would have towards his task-master, the spirit he would have towards his forced labor. A spirit which leads you to fear and tremble. THIS IS NOT WHAT GOD GAVE YOU. In the New Covenant, our basic relationship with God is sons, not fearful slaves!

Galatians 4:3 “So also when we were children, WE WERE IN SLAVERY, under the basic principles of the world.” But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, …. to redeem those under law, that we might RECEIVE the full rights of sons.”

Paul uses slavery and freedom to contrast the Old Covenant with the New, our old life and our new life, our relationship to the law verses our relationship to the Spirit. This slave-like spirit of bondage has to do with living a law based life, instead of a Spirit led life. But NOW the Spirit has brought us into a New Covenant relationship with God that is NOT based on religious fear, or bondage to detailed laws and religious observances.

We are not living in fear of laws, and fear that God will banish us from his presence if we break those laws. Instead we are living in freedom and joyful relationship with our Abba Father. This freedom of spirit is at the heart of the New Covenant.

This spirit of bondage and slavery, is a part of fallen human nature. Galatians 4:8 “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves....to those who by nature are not gods.” It is a part of not knowing God! Unbelievers do NOT have a secure, saved relationship with the one true God. They feel uneasy about God; they have a deep down dislike or discomfort with God. God to them is a Judge, a Law-giver, a Killjoy, some-one they do NOT want to bring their life in submission to. Like Adam, they want to hide from God. Why Atheists are so passionate about denying the existence of God.

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Vs 15 goes on... “You did not receive a spirit of bondage, leading to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship”. You did NOT receive something; but you DID receive something: The Spirit of sonship, the spirit with which children regard their father. It is a spirit of love and confidence, that creates a desire to cheerfully obey.

Instead of being like a slave, cowering, fearful of rejection, anticipating harsh, unloving treatment, you are like a child who cannot wait to see his daddy come home from work. Those who have little children see the way your kids miss you when you leave and are so excited to see you come home. The Holy Spirit gives you that kind of attachment to our heavenly father.

Because you are a son of God, The Holy Spirit moves you to respond to God now, as your loving father. He creates in your heart a longing, a desire, a love for your heavenly Father. He removes the fear, the apprehension, the sense of bondage. Vs 15 says,“You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading to fear again”. You did not come out from the fear and terror of the law to again fear.

The Holy Spirit has entered your spirit freeing you from alarm and terror towards God, In place of this he puts within you a child-like love and trust and confidence in God! And...a child-like desire to obey and please God. Like my 11 year old granddaughter, Olivia wanting to making a whole meal, including dessert, for her dad on his birthday.

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Vs 15 goes on “ And by him (the Holy Spirit) we cry out 'Abba, Father'”. The Spirit of Adoption causes you to cry out to God as your Father.

This relationship with God is expressed with a “cry” of love and longing for Him. The word cry means “a loud cry expressing deep emotion. DMLJ “The Spirit of Adoption is essentially a matter of our feelings towards God”.....about feelings of love towards God, desire for God, and desire for greater and deeper fellowship with God. IE Because of the Holy Spirit being sent into your heart, you WANT God!

We cry, “Abba Father”. Abba is a word meaning father but there is something very special here: It is a word used by children talking to their fathers. It was a word Paul surely had used himself as a child for his own father, a word he had heard other sons and daughters use for their fathers. It was a word, that slaves were not allowed to use for the head of the household, a word reserved for the children to use.

A child doesn't call his father Mr Powell, or Mr Rye; a child uses words like Papa or Daddy. Paul is saying that is how personal and affectionate and informal we can be with the God of Heaven! Since we are no longer slaves, living in a spirit of bondage and fear, we are entitled to use this term Abba. We are led by the Spirit to speak to our heavenly Father as a small child speaks to his father.

DMLJ points out that a child does not come to his father in a formal, dignified way. And a father would not want his son or daughter to do that. He said, “There is nothing here about a beautiful and dignified service. (ie nothing formal here), rather we are looking at a child; there is no dignity in a child, still less pomposity. And there is nothing dignified about the term “Abba”. As I have been showing, it is the familiar, not the dignified.”

Samuel Chadwick told a story about going to apply for a job at the home of a very wealthy and respected man in London. And as he approached the door he did so with fear and trembling, he knocked and asked as respectfully as he could to see the man of the house. The maid, welcomed him in but as he glanced across the room, he saw this great man, in his office on his hands and knees with two of his children riding on his back like a horse.

He was amazed at how he felt he had to stand back from this great man, but the children felt free to come in and enjoy their father. He used this story to show our freedom as children to come to our Heavenly Father.

There are times when I pray I address God as Almighty God, Creator, Awesome and Holy God, but there would be something not quite right about always or mainly seeing God only in this light. We are to be on intimate, affectionate terms.

When we talk about God as Father, or Abba Father, I realize that some here do not have good feelings toward their earthly father. Please, do not buy into lies like “I can never find intimacy with God because my earthly father ruined my concept of Fatherhood”.

It is the Holy Spirit who creates this kind of child-like love in your heart for your heavenly father. It does not depend upon you having had a great home life when you were growing up. Galatians 4:6 attributes this cry directly to the Holy Spirit. “God sent the Spirit of his Son (the Holy Spirit) into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out “Abba, Father”. The Holy Spirit gives you this delight in God as your father, no matter what your past has been. Luther said, “For we bring not this desire or affection with us, neither can we be taught by any laws how to obtain it. This change is plainly and simply the work of the right hand of the most high.”

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Vs 16 “The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” The Holy Spirit “testifies”. What does that mean? He communicates, he lets us know, he assures us, he verifies to us, that we are God's children. He communicates to you that you are in this state of acceptance with God, that you are adopted into God's family, that you are in this child and father relationship with God. You don't have to persuade yourself or talk yourself into being in this relationship, you are given a confidence in this that is deeper than words, deeper than human understanding.

It is an instinctive, inner confidence, a warmth in your heart toward God, a happiness in God. Just like little children are happy to see Daddy walk in the door and they run to him and grab his hand or wrap themselves around his legs. Who put that in them? In the same way no one can explain this desire you have to run to your heavenly Father. All this is placed in your heart by the Holy Spirit. You received this!

This assurance or “witness” of the Spirit is by direct revelation. IE it is not merely that you understand a Bible verse that says, “to all who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God”. That IS important! But this the Holy Spirit telling you directly that you are a beloved son, that you belong to him.

MLJ “It is a wonderful thing to tell someone whom you love that you love him or her, but still more wonderful is the experience of being told by the other, that he or she loves you. In vs 15 we tell God that we love him, “we have the spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba Father., the child's cry of love to the Father. Ah, but here it is God, through the Spirit who is telling us that he loves us, and doing so in the most unmistakeable manner. It is personal and secret”. Like the white stone in Revelation with your name on it, “no one knows this the one who receives it”. It is spirit to spirit communication. You just know that you know.

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Although God has made us sons, you may fall back into serving God with a bondage or slave mentality. As wonderful as these truths are many Christians and probably most all of us, at times regard ourselves as under law and so also feel a kind of bondage and fear. This is clearly what was happening to the Galatians! Vs 4:9 “How is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” This is something that we must continually be warned of and cautioned about.

Often I will hear of some new popular author or speaker who is calling Christians to some kind of deeper experience, or more committed form of Christianity. And it is sincere Christians who are reading or listening to this man. And while the church desperately needs a call to real Christianity, so often, what I see and hear, is a call to some form of slavery, or law, or outward standards, rather than a radical call to live by the Spirit! There are so many temptations to turn back to law based living instead of loving and obeying God in the freedom of sonship.

Tozier said, “Sometimes Christians do not know when the are well off”. We are “well off” under the New Covenant which Jesus purchased for us with his blood! Don't go back!

*This intimate, sonship, relationship with God does not mean you loose reverential respect and godly fear of God. You still fear displeasing him, not out of terror or fright, that he will banish you, but because you love your father and desire to please him. You still have a sense of the majesty of God, that he is an Awesome God, and you have a sense of the greatness of the privilege of coming to him. Our relationship with God is to be deeply reverential, YET at the same time, free hearted and affectionate.

*This does not mean you never have any feelings that you are lonely or forsaken. You may have times that you feel disconnected, or like God has deserted you, going through extreme trial or disappointment or a period of depression, or unbelief, or at a certain time of day or night. But IF the Spirit of Christ has been send into your heart something within you will jump at these comforting promises, and you will respond with a revived spirit and hope and happiness. Something within you will say “YES!, that is true of me.”

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Applications:

*Do you know that you are a child of God? Do you have this assurance? If not, there is no more important application than to go to God this morning for this assurance.

*Address God as “Father”, in your prayers. When Jesus taught us how to pray, he said, “When you pray, say, “Our Father”. God is not the Man upstairs. Dare to call him Papa, or Dear Father, or Daddy if that is the word that expresses this affectionate relationship to you.

*You are free from formal, stiff liturgical religion. I know people have different tastes in worship. Variation is good. But our relationship with God is not basically a formal relationship. It has the freedom, the affection, the “Cry” of a child for it's Papa.

It seems to me the less of this “Abba Father” relationship people have with God, often the more formal their worship becomes. You don't need a cavernous cathedral to worship God; you don't need prayer beads, or to bow before a lit candle. You don't need stained glass windows, or a glorious choir in robes singing in musical perfection. You don't need to speak in a low whisper to God or go to a chapel, or church building to feel near to him. We don't have to have a perfect church service, perfect music, perfect sermon, in order to lovingly worship God. We are just children coming to our Father!

*Do not let the affairs of everyday life, or the Christian life or even the church or being a pastor or deacon draw you away from the enjoyment of this basic relationship of being a son. You can become so absorbed with issues with your work, or being a good mom or dad or husband or wife, or getting to the next event, getting your kids to all their things, or finding God's will, or wrestling with a doctrinal issue, that you forget the most glorious thing we have in life is this child-like relationship with God. This is the most important thing about you - that you are a son or a daughter of God! And it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Revel in that. Enjoy that!

*We have been saying around our home, “What a great thing it is to be a Christian”. And when we forget that something is wrong! If we understand the truths of this “sonship”, we won't be saying, “what a bummer life is”, “when are things ever going to go my way”, or “when am I ever going to get a break”. We will be thinking what a great thing to be a son of God!

*Respond to the Holy Spirits promptings to call out to God “Abba Father”, dear Father,. Say to God, Father, I am so glad to be your son or your daughter. Talk to God as a child talking to his father. Don't quench this Spirit crying Abba Father. Let him lead you into this personal intimacy and enjoyment of your heavenly Father.